Study Center
Learn GenAI in one-minute reads
Short, plain-English explainers on how AI works, from supervised learning to LLMs and the companies that build them. 15 topics, about 15 minutes in total.
Foundations
How machines learn: the core ideas behind every AI system.
01AI vs machine learning vs deep learningAI means computers doing things that seem smart. Machine learning is how most AI is built today: the computer learns from…1 min readRead →02Supervised learningSupervised learning is learning with an answer key. The computer sees many examples where the right answer is already…1 min readRead →03Unsupervised learningUnsupervised learning is learning with no answer key. The computer looks at lots of data and finds groups and patterns on…1 min readRead →04Reinforcement learningReinforcement learning is learning by trying things and getting rewards. The computer repeats what earns points and avoids…1 min readRead →05Deep learning and neural networksA neural network is a computer program made of many small connected parts, a bit like brain cells. It learns by slowly…1 min readRead →
Evolution
How AI got from rules and statistics to today's generative models.
GenAI & LLMs
What generative AI and large language models are, and how they work.
01What is generative AI?Generative AI is AI that makes new things, like text, pictures, music or computer code. It learns from lots of examples and…1 min readRead →02What is a large language model (LLM)?An LLM is a computer program trained on a huge amount of writing. Its main skill is guessing the next word, again and…1 min readRead →03Transformers and attentionThe transformer is the design that powers most chatbots. Its key trick, called attention, lets the computer look at all the…1 min readRead →04Tokens and the context windowA token is a small piece of text, about three-quarters of a word. The context window is how much text the AI can keep in…1 min readRead →05How LLMs are trainedChatbots learn in three steps. First they read a huge amount of text to learn language. Then they practise on good example…1 min readRead →06Retrieval-augmented generation (RAG)RAG lets an AI look things up before answering. The system finds the right pages in your documents and hands them to the…1 min readRead →07AI hallucinationsA hallucination is when an AI says something that is wrong or made up, but sounds sure of itself. It happens because the AI…1 min readRead →
Providers & ecosystem
Who builds the models, and how to tell them apart.
01LLM providers: who builds the modelsA few companies build the best-known chatbots: OpenAI (ChatGPT), Anthropic (Claude), Google (Gemini), Meta (Llama)…1 min readRead →02Open-weight vs closed modelsA closed model can only be used through the company's app or service. An open-weight model comes as a file you can download…1 min readRead →